


The Plans We Make

by wearitcounts (Sher_locked_up)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Love, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mycroft is a scheming force of good, Post-Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Rimming, just a little bit of rimming, once again, s3 fix-it, will they ever learn to talk about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 00:44:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4726421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sher_locked_up/pseuds/wearitcounts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it can take a lot of fancy footwork even to fall backward into exactly where you're meant to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Plans We Make

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scullyseviltwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin/gifts).



> Happy birthday, beautiful. 
> 
> (Bit morbid, for birthday fic. But we're all about the gallows humor.)
> 
> Thank you, as ever, to Erin for the lightning-quick beta.

The day John signs the decree absolute, he buys the cemetery plot next to Sherlock's. It stands to reason that since it had turned out to be empty, someday it likely wouldn't be, and John doesn't particularly want to spend any amount of eternity anywhere other than beside Sherlock Holmes.

He doesn’t tell Sherlock about it. He wonders how you might even begin a conversation like that as he lies in bed that night, the deed tucked up under his pillow like a missive from an erstwhile paramour. It’s silly, but it’s comfort nonetheless.

He’s back at 221B of course, has been for going on four months now. He’s often had the half-asleep notion that Sherlock’s monitoring him at night, lingering just beyond John’s ability to make out a shadow or a shape in the thin ribbon of light between the floor and the bottom of his bedroom door, and he usually sets the enormity of that idea away to examine later before dropping back down beneath consciousness. Tonight he’s awake, widely so, and he knows Sherlock is there.

“You can come in, if you want,” John calls out.

The door opens so slowly John’s not sure he’s not imagining it, and Sherlock slips inside with a quiet rustle of dressing gown.

“Come on, then.” John gestures to a bit of space he’s made on his bed.

Sherlock sits. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I know. It’s all right.”

Sherlock pauses and then says, “I am sorry.”

“I know that too.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, and then John adds, “Thanks. For having me back here, I mean.”

“This is your home.” Sherlock says it like he’s answering a question, like John is being obtuse. He says it like he needs to hear it himself.

“Yes,” John agrees, and Sherlock’s frame relaxes marginally.

“I’ll play something.” Sherlock stands and walks to the door, holds it only as open as it needs to be for him to slide halfway behind it. “To help you sleep.”

“Cheers,” John says, “I actually missed it, you know. The violin at all hours.”

There’s a ghost of a smile and Sherlock leaves John’s door ajar to allow the sound of his playing to creep in quietly, lush and deep and folding over John like a blanket and it’s not long after that he slips sweetly into a dream about dark woods and pale eyes and the way the stars look between the tops of tall buildings on a clear London night.

 

*

 

It’s been five days and John still hasn’t mentioned the plot. It hangs about the back of his consciousness in the manner of guilt and he’s reluctant to examine exactly why. He sometimes wonders if it’s because he’s waiting for Sherlock to bring it up. Sherlock’s the clever one, after all. It baffles John, really, that Sherlock hasn’t taken one look at him and deduced it, all of it, from something about the way John looks or smells or raises his eyebrows; a missed button, a new frown line on John’s forehead. John’s surprised he’s even been able to choose _not_ to talk about it.

The outside world, for all anyone could tell, appears unchanged. They go on cases, they let Mrs. Hudson fuss about the state of the flat, they stay up far too late for middle-aged men and their diet is less than ideal. Sherlock is the exact version of himself he’s been since the wedding, softer around the mouth and more crinkled around the eyes and seeming to constantly betray some kind of uncertainty about something John can’t determine.

John slides beneath his duvet and reaches for the light. Six days.

 

*

 

Sherlock is marking up a police file with a red ballpoint pen when Mycroft arrives, glides in like a ship with full sails, umbrella hanging almost jauntily from his forearm. Sherlock ignores him.

Mycroft hovers, and Sherlock knows those keen grey eyes are following the line of his pen. “Inspector Lestrade may not thank you for correcting his grammar, Sherlock.”

Sherlock doesn’t bother to look up. “I correct what needs correcting.” The next red line presses almost through the paper. “Are you here for any useful reason, or just fancied spoiling my day?”

Mycroft drops a slim file onto the table in front of Sherlock. “Macabre though it may be, it’s actually quite romantic.” Sherlock raises his head, finally, and Mycroft gives him a thin, oily sort of smile. “It would seem your desires may in fact be reciprocated.”

Sherlock eyes the dossier. “My desires?”

“Eternity,” Mycroft says. “People have such ridiculous notions.”

Sherlock sighs. He doesn’t want to rise to Mycroft’s bait, but he hasn’t the time for games. He picks up the file and opens it and momentarily, forgets to breathe.

“This is dated three weeks ago.”

“Yes,” Mycroft agrees.

“You’re slipping.” Sherlock’s voice scathes, drips venom, and Mycroft only smiles a bit wider.

“I’m afraid John Watson’s adventures in real estate are not quite of the most urgent priority,” he says. “There was also the small matter of it not necessarily being entirely your business; but, as ever, you both seem to be incapable of meaningful conversation. So: here we are.”

“You shouldn’t have shown me this.”

“Probably not,” Mycroft agrees. “I live in hope, however, that you’ll make good use of the information.”

Sherlock is deliberately silent as Mycroft walks out, dropping a “Good day” behind him that’s a little too casual in the very precise way only Mycroft can achieve.

 

*

 

“So we’re just buying graves, now?”

John stiffens, his back to Sherlock, pauses with one hand hovering over the kettle and doesn’t reply. He slowly turns.

“Something you’d like to tell me? Like what the _hell_ you were thinking?” Sherlock holds a file, manila and blank and all too incriminating, shakes it furiously in his fist. “This. Is. _Intolerable_!”

“Is it,” John says. “Is it intolerable? As intolerable as killing myself in front of you? As intolerable as lying about being dead for two bloody years while I mourned the one person who—”

“I _had_ to do those things, John! It was the only way to ensure your safety—”

“And what about yours!” John roars, and he’s had it now, he really has, because this is it, it’s always been about this, they’ve always just danced politely around the fact that the day Sherlock died, a part of John did too, and even after Sherlock did the impossible and came back to him, John still doesn’t have it back. “You could have _died_. You could have died cold and alone and not knowing—” John stops, shakes his head, looks down.

“I don’t know anything about death other than that it happens,” John says, and he lifts his eyes to meet Sherlock’s. “When it happens to us, I want us to be together.”

The air in the room is slowly starting to move around them again as Sherlock drops his arm and his gaze and heaves a small and weary sigh.

“It took so long, so very long to get here. To get to where we are,” Sherlock stops, seems to recalibrate. “We’ve only just got it all right again, and here you are, throwing death at the end of it like a bloody punctuation mark. The idea of your loss is _unacceptable to me_. It’s not something I’m willing to _plan_. That I have a grave was unavoidable; that you should have one is absurd.”

“Not planning on either of us using them anytime soon,” John says, and it’s a weak joke, and Sherlock gives him an equally weak and watered-down smile.

John’s about to return it, about to suggest a cuppa and some crap telly, when Sherlock moves forward, even more into John’s space, leans over and kisses him.

It’s over before John can even register it happened, and then Sherlock’s backing away, his eyes wide with alarm. “I don’t—I’m sorry—” Sherlock chokes out, and then John’s moving back into Sherlock’s space, pushing him up against the worktop and digging his fingers into Sherlock’s hips as he kisses him, over and over, hard and wet and not just a little desperate. Sherlock whimpers and raises his hands to John’s face.

John pulls his mouth away slightly, presses his forehead forward more. “ _I’m_ sorry,” he breathes out, his lips still grazing Sherlock’s, “I’m so, so sorry,” and it’s not about the row or the plot or any particular thing, it’s just understood that he’s sorry, that it’s over now, that he’s going to stop having things to be sorry about.

Sherlock gives a tiny nod. “I know,” he says.

 

*

 

If Sherlock were to be asked about it later he’d find himself woefully, uncharacteristically devoid of the particulars. Details, he has; oh, he has details: the smell of John’s sweat-slick skin, the blood-hot, wet-velvet feeling of John’s tongue, John’s small, strong hands, John’s mouth on his, on _him_ , everywhere, John’s mouth. All that’s packed away, stored in satin-lined boxes in his mind palace for safekeeping.

But John Watson keeps him right; John Watson keeps him present, keeps him inside himself, keeps Sherlock from fizzing up and floating away, from moving far and fast enough to only observe; John Watson makes him experience. John Watson has his senses flooded, his skin flushed, his brain finally, blissfully serene.

He’s lying prostrate on his bed and he can’t seem to focus on anything beyond the incredible sensation of John’s miraculous mouth, John’s tongue moving over him, inside him, undoing him, and then John fits a hand between Sherlock’s hips and the bed and Sherlock’s voice breaks on a sob as he moans, prays to a religion he never thought he was capable of having.

 

*

 

The day after their first night together, Sherlock arranges to have the headstone removed from his grave. Someday there will be a reason to have one, he thinks. But it doesn’t do to plan.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Plans We Make](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4734677) by [bagofthumbs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagofthumbs/pseuds/bagofthumbs)




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